Ancient Civilizations

[Debi]

There have always been tales of Ancient Civilizations....Atlantis, etc. Stories have been told, myths abound. We have stories of crystal power, Vimanas, flying wheels, and ancient Egyptian batteries.

Do you believe we have had former advanced civilizations? And what would you define as "advanced?" That's a word that gives a lot of wiggle room. Were aliens involved or did we simply advance and then "fall".

What's your current take on the "past"?

 

[TexDanm]

You asked...

I believe that mankind dates back much farther than current paleontology proposes. The current theory was based on a Darwinian progression from the more primitive hominids to the current Homo Sapiens sapiens. More and more there is evidence though that those different hominid lines coexisted with more modern forms.

I suspect that mankind has risen to civilization only to fall back several times due to various near extinction-level events. We don’t find much trace of them because the changes in the face of this world have gone to through many changes. If another ice age came along New York City would be scraped away as the ice pushed down and across much of the Northern part of North America. Much the same would be true of most of the North of Europe.

As the ice took up more and more of the world water the oceans and seas would be very different. The Mediterranean would be much smaller and the Black sea would be a fertile valley with a freshwater lake in the middle. The Persian Gulf would be another huge fertile valley with rivers and a lush and alive ecology. The Bahamas would be dry plains. The Sahara desert was a grassy fertile area.

Then just as we did in this period the rise of civilization would come to the shores and in these fertile valleys. When the ice melted all of these places were lost and are now under 400 to 600 feet of water. The places that were not flooded out of existence may have just as suddenly become arid and the cities there were eroded away or buried in the sand.

The higher a civilization rises the less it will use massive stone for construction. Very little of what we make now would survive a thousand years much less ten thousand. When something anomalous is found it is placed aside as a fraud or explained away.

How high might those past civilizations reach? I suspect that there were several and the level at which they were was variable. The rise of civilization isn’t a slow smooth progression. The current version went thousands of years with animal power as the primary way to move things and work our fields. My father grew up in a world that was still horse-powered for many. He rode a horse to school and they farmed with mules. He lived from horse and buggy through the Model T and eventually to the moon with airplanes making our world small. All of that in one lifetime.The population which had slowly grown burst fort in a massive jump of population. Our world is becoming a very small and crowded place.

The higher a civilization rises the father it will fall if something happens that destroys its infrastructure. How many people these days could survive without power, running water or heat other from fires? The houses that we live in would be mostly uninhabitable without power. How far are most people from a reliable water source? As fast as we rose we would fall even faster and even farther. We have let the animals that we used wane and change into less than they were. There are not any draft horses or mules to farm for us now. There are no oxen in the more civilized places.

The higher parts of civilization are more fragile and easier to destroy. What use would most of what we have be with no power and no fuel. All civilizations are to some extent giant houses of cards. I suspect that we are at or maybe slightly above the past average. This has been an unusually long and gentle time. We are at a point where we COULD escape the endless cycles. We could grow and become Solarians instead of just Terrans as we spread our an onto the other places in this solar system. There is no indication that mankind has ever made that leap.

There are a lot of hints that past civilizations had reached a mechanized level. They possibly made advances above us in some areas. They may have mastered some parts of physics that we have yet to get a grip on. There is a lot of evidence that they had and probably use nuclear power or maybe abused it.

The thing about a fall is that it is never an even thing. The highest places will fall but there will always be places that are not as devastated. The problem is that an advanced technological civilization is a worldwide thing. Little pieces may struggle on for a time and there may be bits and pieces that survive on for a long time but it can’t exist for long without the resources from places all over the world. Slowly those pockets that the great fall missed will settle into a lower and lower level as the population will also fall. The famines that we survive now because the places that are hit receive aid from the places not affected. Without that worldwide commerce the population that any area can support will be limited. The plagues will return, typhoid, cholera, and all of the many common diseases that mean little in a higher civilization are still here waiting for us to fall.

Again and again man has risen and until we make it to a system based civilization rather than a planetary one, the cycles will stay unbroken.

 

[Debi]

You asked...

Yes...yes I did indeed! lol

 

[Paulm]

very interesting thoughts dan has, but I will go the other way and say I think this is it, this is the furthest we have reached and the most advanced we have ever been. fossil evidence being one reason, with the lack of evidence of a more advanced civilization before us being another. gauging from the past weather extremes and climate conditions is a start, sure, but the severe weather patterns cannot be repeated or forecast because of the variables involved, the last ice age was created / started by an asteroid strike, the sahara or other desert areas were once fertile but that was possibly a time of continental drift, whereas the continents are no longer in the same coordinates to maintain those or similar environments....we also have to take Pangea into consideration, before the splitting.....environments change and will never be repeated or the same so looking at the past for possibilities of the far future are not reliable forcasts… but fossils and signs of intelligent / evolutionary traits stay, so far we haven't found what would say we were at one point ahead of where we are now...… boy, I don't even know if what I just wrote makes sense to myself...lol...maybe it is kinda coherent or at least something along those lines....

 

[Paulm]

now of course we do also have to consider that Pangea is just the latest super continent to have existed, it seems that the continents may actually re form and break apart on a regular basis of every billion years or so...lol... so the question here is did humans evolve at those times or was the dominate species something else...reptilian perhaps......just thought I would throw that out there...lol

 

[Duke]

very interesting thoughts dan has, but I will go the other way and say I think this is it, this is the furthest we have reached and the most advanced we have ever been. fossil evidence being one reason, with the lack of evidence of a more advanced civilization before us being another. gauging from the past weather extremes and climate conditions is a start, sure, but the severe weather patterns cannot be repeated or forecast because of the variables involved, the last ice age was created / started by an asteroid strike, the sahara or other desert areas were once fertile but that was possibly a time of continental drift, whereas the continents are no longer in the same coordinates to maintain those or similar environments....we also have to take Pangea into consideration, before the splitting.....environments change and will never be repeated or the same so looking at the past for possibilities of the far future are not reliable forcasts… but fossils and signs of intelligent / evolutionary traits stay, so far we haven't found what would say we were at one point ahead of where we are now...… boy, I don't even know if what I just wrote makes sense to myself...lol...maybe it is kinda coherent or at least something along those lines....

Yeah, I'm with you on this, but I also think ancients were more capable than many give them credit for. Flying machines and A bombs? Of course not. The ability to build complex structures, discern the medicinal qualities of plants/herbs, and understand the basic principles of astronomy and meteorology is pretty impressive, however.

 

[TexDanm]

There actually is evidence out there. What some ascribe to aliens could just as well have been humans interacting with other humans in a much less advanced part of the world. A agree that we are most likely about as high as a culture can be and still be wiped out leaving no solid evidence of our existence. We have been on the edge of getting off this single world for a long time now.

There is a lot of evidence that many ancient people had so sort of interaction with other beings that could fly. This is in the stories and oral traditions from all over the world. What I suspect is that there have been past civilizations that were near but never quite reaching our current level.

There is a lot of very anomalous stuff from within this cycle like the Bagdad batteries and the Antikythera Mechanism. How did the Maya know about the twenty-six thousand year precession of the seasons caused by the slight wobble of the Earth's axis? There are several cases where either ancient or primitive people seem to have knowledge of astronomical features that can not be seen with the naked eye.

All of this COULD be aliens rather than misunderstood interactions between civilized groups of humans and much more primitive groups. I always wonder then why were they so active with us all over the world and then seem to have either left or at least have become very secretive. To ascribe all of the amazing things that we know were done in the far past to only aliens is seriously not understanding the genuine creativeness of the human species.

 

[Rowan2222]

I could write a book on this as I think many would find it interesting.
Based on what I have read from the ancient texts, it seems like we have been visited in our past by an advanced race. We were rather primitive monkeys at that time, but with a bit of DNA manipulation we became pretty well what we are now.

The main reason they came was for fuel - uranium to be precise, and used us to mine it and refine it into bars suitable for use in their ships.

As we were a slave race there was no need to give us the technology so it was kept a secret to them. They were the Gods and we were the mortals and so it went for centuries until they had enough to leave. They had mastered a type of immortality - needed if you are to navigate the stars.
Therefore we know Gods are immortal (sort of). And that they have magic (technology) but don't know how it all works.

Things did not always go to plan. Their fist DNA experiments produced strange hybrids - the minataur, cyclops, giants and other beings of Greek myth, but some had higher intelligence and were employed as "Overseers" - or "the watchers". These are what we know of the Egyptian Gods.

I believe that when they left - they left one or two of their kind behind to rule over their creation. I believe Isis and Osiris were these two.
They eventually died, but the chain of command was such that Egypt was ruled first by Gods- then "Of Gods" but lacking in their knowledge.

Eventually what was left behind was worshipped as religious relics, then broken up and used as jewelry.

There is a lot more in there- the great pyramid, the ark, uranium processing plants, communications, weapons left to defend us if needed, but that is the basic gist. -
We were a fuel stop and they needed a slave population of miners.

 

[Lynne]

It sure is fun to consider the possibilities. Pre flood life may have had advanced technologies. This would explain some of the impossible structures. However it’s possible to have some technical or alchemy knowledge and still have simple or primative lifestyles.

 

[Paulm]

Yeah, I'm with you on this, but I also think ancients were more capable than many give them credit for. Flying machines and A bombs? Of course not. The ability to build complex structures, discern the medicinal qualities of plants/herbs, and understand the basic principles of astronomy and meteorology is pretty impressive, however.

i agree, the astronomy topic i find interesting because i have wondered what the skies were actually like thousands of years ago... here and now you cannot see much because of the air quality and light pollution. but back then just how much was visible to the naked eye?.. maybe before the eruption of a super volcano or before an asteroid strike the visibility was so great that it wasn't beyond belief they could come up with some of their learning and interpretations of astronomy, most of the celestial events is patterned, so its just learning the when and where of those patterns, for sky watchers that wouldn't take long to figure out... i think...lol... medicinal qualities of plants was i imagine just trial and error, we still do that with herbs and supplements, GNC and a whole gym industry is a good example..... along with in the middle ages ppl were burned as witches or werewolves because of ergot ingestion, but a few hundred years later a dude figured out how to turn ergot into a recreational drug known as acid....lol....( and ive never heard of anyone on acid thinking they were a werewolf...so figure that one out....lmao) anyways, yes i think they were more capable in a lot of ways, or maybe not as primitive as we sometimes think. but still the building blocks as to then and now can be seen as to how we have reached this level we are now on.